Tutoring
by Hydrochloric Cutie
Summary: Santana is having some trouble in her class, and the teacher recommends the most unlikely tutor.


Tutoring

Mr. Burns put the most recent quick back on Santana's desk, a big red C splashed across the top of the page. She groaned, because written underneath was a message. 'Please see me after class.' She shoved the paper in her bag. She just couldn't get all this mitosis and meiosis stuff, the way the teacher explained it was just not working for her. The bell rang, announcing the end of class and Santana took her time packing up the rest of her bag and only approached Burns' desk when the last student left the room.

"What's up Burnsie?" she greeted, perching herself on a desk across from his.

"I know you're smart Santana, but I can't understand why you keep getting lower grades on my quizzes and tests."

"I don't know," she replied. "I really just don't get this cell division stuff. I mean all the pictures you show are pretty, but they don't mean squat to me."

"I think I might have someone who could help you," he said, a small smile on his lips. "Can you stay after school tomorrow?"

"Yeah, Cheerio's season is over for a little while," she said.

"Well, I would like for you to meet up with one of my best students who can help you, probably in more ways than just my class."

"Fine, I'll work with your science dork."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Santana nearly forgot about meeting with her new science tutor when Mr. Burns asked her to stay after. Everyone looked at her but she shrugged it off. They probably thought she was going to suck him off for better grades. "So where are they Burnsie?"

"Hey, Mr. Burns," a cheerful voice announced from the classroom doorway. Santana's head whipped around, only to see – much to her surprise – Finn Hudson.

"Finn, right on time," Mr. Burns greeted. "I figured you might be willing to help out Santana. She's got some visual issues with our topics."

"Yeah, no problem," he said, walking off into the storage room and rummaging around.

"Finn? Really? But he is failing Spanish," she said with indignation.

"He's one of my best students, AP Bio and AP Chem."

"But he is so dumb!"

"I think because he is a jock, he feels the need to dumb himself down to fit in. He and David Karofsky."

"Dave's smart?" she questioned.

"He's in AP calculus and Statistics."

"God, closet nerdy jocks" she muttered. Finn made his reappearance with a small cardboard box about the size of a loaf of bread.

"Alright, I'll leave you to it," Mr. Burns said. "Just close the door when you leave." And with that, he left the two students alone in the classroom.

"So, you guys are talking about mitosis and meiosis right?" Finn asked, putting the box on the long black desk next to the teacher's.

"How the hell are this this smart? What about Spanish?" she asked, still confused.

"Yeah, I'd get made fun of if everyone knew that I was in the advanced classes," Finn said, starting to unpack the box, starting with a pack of colored chalk. "but I just don't get Spanish. All the rules, irregularities, and conjugations."

"You are something else, Hudson," she replied, walking over to him. He unpacked some playdough now. "We gonna be five now?"

"Well, he said the pictures weren't working for you. Maybe you just need a hands-on approach."

"So we're going to play," she prompted, smiling softly.

"Yeah, pretty much," he replied. "Come this way. Chalk, playdough, or both?"

"Both."

"Alright, chalk lines on the table with be the cell's plasma membrane. For right now, we'll pretend that Chromsomes are in the cell, nothing else. Normally they are in the nucleus. How many chromosomes do you want to use?"

"Uh, how about 3?" she ventured. He nodded, grabbed the white chalk and drew five circles, one bean-shaped thing and five smaller circles.

"Pick three different colored playdoughs," Finn prompted. Santana picked up the red, green, and blue. "Alright, we're gonna make chromosomes. What is the first stage called?"

"Isn't it interphase? It looked like a big jumble."

"That's right. This is when all the relaxed chromosomes are replicating DNA. So I'm just going to used red, green, and blue chalk and draw a jumble of DNA." Finn drew out his DNA and labeled the first circle as interphase. "Okay, what's next?"

"I always get these confused," she grumbled, digging her book out of her bag, cracking it open to the proper section. "Okay, prophase?"

"Yup, the chromosomes are condensing into the x-shaped chromosomes that we normally associate with cell division. Now there are two of each color, so make six x's and put them in the prophase cell. She got to work making 2 red x's, 2 green x's, and 2 blue x's. Once they were done, she put them in the cell.

"Okay, what's next?" she questioned. "Metaphase?"

"Yup, tell me about it," he prompted.

"I don't know, it's after prophase?" she shrugged.

"Meta has an m in it and the chromosomes line up on the middle, so they can me separated later."

"Well, that makes sense," she said, making six more x's and lining them up along a chalk dotted line that Finn drew. Once they were all lined up, she looked up at Finn for the next step.

"What happens next?" he asks, pointing to the next circle in line.

"Um, don't they start to pull apart?" she questioned, trying not to look at her book.

"That's right, Anaphase. Ana… apart, both a's," he said, giving her another trick to remember. "So go ahead and make the chromosomes pull apart from the midline."

Santana had already started this instruction before he could get out the entire sentence. She was starting to figure things out with the way Finn was explaining them, and giving her a little trick to remember which phase is which. "Alright, so the last one is telophase?"

"That's right," Finn said. "Telophase is typically coupled with cytokinesis, which it the complete pinching between the cells."

"So you're saying that when the chromosomes are fully separated, the cells are automatically starting to get themselves separated from each other?" Santana asked.

"The cell doesn't want to take any more time than they have to. It takes about 20 minutes to complete a full cycle," Finn said, excited that she was asking questions about this. It was starting to get her interest. Santana got to work completing their last cell phase in mitosis. They sat there for another hour going over the implications of meiosis and the two different types of mitosis it has to go through. By the end of their time, Santana had a great understanding of mitosis and meiosis. Never would she have believed that Finn was this good at science. She was going to be coming to him for any help she needed with this class. Science was always her hardest subject.

"Thanks Finn, this really helped," Santana admitted as they walked out to their cars after the study session.

"You're welcome," Finn said brightly. "You can come to me whenever you need a bit of a boost in Mr. Burns class."

"I'm definitely going to be taking you up for that," she said, giving him a slight nudge to his arm.


End file.
